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Typhoon

Revell’s Euroighter

By Peter Doyle

TYPHOON

The Euroighter Typhoon was first mooted in the early 1980s as a collaborative programme between Britain, German, Italy, Spain, Greece and France. France pulled out before the project really got going and Greece also pulled out for funding reasons. The first step in the development of the aircraft was BAe’s privately developed technology demonstrator, the EAP, which first lew in the mid 1980s. This was followed by the first light of the joint Euroighter design in March 1994. Following use of the RR RB199 in the EAP all production Typhoons have been itted with the Eurojet EJ200, another collaborative project but based largely on Rolls-Royce’s XG-40 technology demonstrator.

Politics and lack of full commitment from governments have slowed the project down over the years, including a German attempt to withdraw from the project in the early 1990s to instead develop a simpler version. Work share then became an issue following reductions in planned purchases, which left each nation’s order quantities noticeably out of proportion compared with their work share. Germany, having almost halved its order from an initial 250 aircraft to just 140, insisted on retaining the same proportion of the work share. Britain in the meanwhile had only reduced its order from 250 to 232. Sensibly however a compromise was eventually found. In general sales have been a little slower than might have been hoped for and undoubtedly the slow progress of the project and particularly the continuing lack of an AESA radar have not helped, the latter once again resulting from failures between the partners to agree.